


Neruda at Midnight

by Measured



Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Poetry, Pregnancy, Reading Aloud
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-02-19
Packaged: 2018-03-13 18:09:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3391199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Measured/pseuds/Measured
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I might not have come home in time for a candlelight dinner, but you, me and <i>Neruda</i> have a date."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Neruda at Midnight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RAXip](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RAXip/gifts).



> cottoncandy_bingo: beautiful. Not finale compliant! Set before the end, anyways.
> 
> For and betaed by Multiversecafe.

She woke up to dark, hazy in messy sheets. She rubbed her eyes at the candlelight, his face angled in light. 

"I only meant to close my eyes for a few minutes," she said.

The book of economics was caught in the bedsheets beside her, the cover bent and creased. 

She laughed softly to herself. "This keeps happening. I start to read and I just drift off. Like that," she said and snapped her fingers. Tracy tried to finger-comb her hair back into a semblance of neatness. She hadn't even taken off her makeup before she napped, so now the bedsheets had a streak of red on them, like the lost hints of a love affair.

"I meant to only stay in Long Island for a little while, but Barney and Robin were in town, and I had so much to tell them," Ted said.

She could only imagine how long he must have talked. How many stories, how many times Barney and Robin must have looked at each other and made gagging motions.

"Sorry I missed it, I was busy being pregnant and accidentally falling asleep at every opportunity," she said.

"You're going to win an award. The cutest sleeper---The Sleeping Beauty award," he said.

He leaned in to give her a closed mouth kiss. He still looked at her like she was so beautiful, even before she showered, or now, with her lipstick somewhere between drunken clown and drunken office party tryst. 

"Did you sleep well?" Ted said.

She hadn't dreamt in a while. After so many what if's and lost faces, it was a relief just to rest and not see images of a future she would never had. One she had finally laid to rest.

She nodded, not naming the ghosts. 

He put the candle on the nightstand. "I might not have come home in time for a candlelight dinner, but you, me and _Neruda_ have a date."

"With a tricycle like that, you're bound to win your championship belt," she said.

He smiled; he always did whenever she remembered parts of his stories, the small parts of him others might not have noticed.

"I knew there was a reason I loved you, I just didn't know it would turn into millions of reasons, until I couldn't even list them all, even if I had an entire weekend to do it," he said.

But oh, he would try.

She laughed as he curled up to her, shadowed in the dim candlelight. Of course, it would be easier to just turn on a lamp, but when given the chance for romance, Ted would always take the most elaborate way.

His voice was warm and smooth. Sometimes she lost the words of the familiar poem, the one he had settled on. Not of love and longing, but of familiarity and contentment. Once it had been _I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair_ that was the most read poem. He could repeat it without looking, had once confessed that he thought to take Spanish so he could translate the words himself. They were his mantra, his search, his being. 

But now, he was _Love, We're Going Home Now_ that described him to his core. The one he repeated, the poem he started an ended each day with.

"And now, dearest, we return, across the crackling sea, like two blind birds to their wall, to their nest in a distant spring."

His gaze stayed on her lips as he said the rest, lingering over _our kisses head back home where they belong._

He closed the book, thoughtful and gentle as he kissed her forehead. He brushed his fingers through her messy hair, soft enough that he never caught a tangle. "You know, I didn't think I'd ever be this happy. There were moments where I about gave up."

"Me too," she said. She took his hand, and they just sat together in the flicking dim light. 

"You know, if we ever get on hard times, you could go into the audiobook business. Like a phone sex line for the choosy and romantic housewives," she said.

"Like posting a sex tape, but with—wait for it--- _Neruda_ ," Ted said, in a perfect mimicry of Barney.

The less he saw his friends, the more of their tics he gained. Even the ones he'd rolled his eyes at ages ago. They lived on in him, even beyond long phone calls, video chats and a million texts throughout the day. In his stories, they were eternally in their twenties, drinking late into the night and looking for something more.

She'd heard them so many times, she could repeat them verbatim back to him. Enough that she felt like she had become a part of this group, even before she had. Ted always had a way of making his audience feel like they'd accidentally become a part of his family somewhere between beers.

"Add some e.e. cummings in there, and we'll be millionaires. All the women would be so jealous. I snagged the most romantic man in the world. There'd be Lifetime movies about you," she said.

Ted raised his eyebrows. "Lifetime movies? Now _there's_ an accomplishment."

"You don't have to pretend you don't cry over romantic comedies with me," she said.

"We don't speak about the Nicholas Sparks incident around Neruda," Ted said. He put his hands over the book of poetry, as if shielding its ears, if it had them.

"But, you know, I don't think I want to share you, not even with choosy housewives," she said.

He rested his hand on her stomach. Feeling for a kick, a heartbeat. They'd spent hours together, just _together_ and feeling a kind of intimacy she thought only existed in books.

"Don't worry, I'm all yours," Ted said.

*

**Author's Note:**

> [Love We're Going Home Now](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/love-we-re-going-home-now/)  
> [I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-crave-your-mouth-your-voice-your-hair/).


End file.
